Increasingly, people “surf” the Internet and watch television at the same time. Since the Internet contains a vast amount of information on virtually any subject, viewers may wish to search for information related to the topic of the particular programming they are watching. Unfortunately, the Internet is not always well organized, and the search for additional information may be quite time consuming.
In some instances, video programming references a related web site through a text display or voice-over. However, viewers may not remember the Internet address correctly, and fail to ever reach the referenced web site. In addition, there may be a number of sites from which the viewer could obtain additional information related to the subject matter of the video program. Since television programs and commercials are limited in duration, they cannot contain all the related information that a viewer may wish to receive.
Currently, it is known that uniform resource locators (URLs), which designate particular Internet addresses, can be embedded in an electronic signal, such as a video or audio program. A URL decoder is then used to extract the URL from the video signal and determine the associated Internet address. In this way, Internet addresses related to the programming can be inserted by the program creator, thereby narrowing the search for Internet information.
As one example of integration of television and the Internet, U.S. Pat. No. 6,018,768 issued to Ullman et al. discloses synchronizing the broadcast of a video program with the presentation of web pages related to the program. More particularly, URLs embedded in the video program signal are extracted and interpreted, and the associated web pages are retrieved and automatically streamed to the user. In this system, therefore, the user receives all of the web pages prescribed by the broadcaster, in the order prescribed by the broadcaster. However, the user may not wish to view each and every web page designated by the video program, and furthermore may wish to view the web pages at a time and in an order of their choosing.
Therefore, a need exists for an integration of video and/or audio programming and the Internet, wherein the retrieval of web sites related to the programming is selectable by the user.